Bad Bedbug bill A-1578 up for Assembly vote
Monday, March 9, 2015.
Vote No on A-1578: Bedbug bill, as written would cause great harm to tenants.
Dear Tenant Friend,
A-1578, sponsored by New Jersey Assemblywoman L. Grace Spencer (D-29), would drastically change the rules about who is responsible for getting rid of bedbugs. Today, that responsibility is the landlord's in almost every circumstance. If this bill becomes law, it will be quite easy for a landlord to shift that responsibility and heavy cost onto tenants.
This bill started out a number of years ago as a good bill that just stated emphatically that it is the landlord's job to exterminate bedbugs. It was motivated by a poor court decision by a judge who apparently thought tenants should be held liable. So, back then, we supported the bill.
But the landlords got their hooks into the bill and got so many revisions that it has become biased against and extremely harmful to tenants.
CALL YOUR ASSEMBLY MEMBERS TO VOTE NO ON A-1578 !!
Language throughout the bill implies that tenants are the cause of bedbug infestations, when we know it's impossible to determine who brings these annoying pests into a building. Maintenance workers, delivery people, landlords, tenants, postal workers -- ANYONE who enters a building can inadvertently bring these bedbugs in. And once they're in, it's really hard to get them out. But the responsibility for doing that must continue to be the landlord's.
The bill says that a tenant who suspects they have bedbugs must report that to the landlord. What does that even mean? How does anyone know what a tenant may suspect? Tenants who KNOW there are bedbugs in their apartment because they know what they look like, they've seen them, and they've suffered many bedbug bites -- should certainly report it.
The bill says that a recurrence of bedbugs more than 50 days after an extermination is the fault of the tenants. Utterly ridiculous! These bugs can live dormant in ventilation systems completely undetected for over a year! Recurrences just mean that the extermination was not good enough. It's completely unreasonable to assume it's the tenant's fault.
And if they find bedbugs when you're moving out, the cost will get taken out of your security deposit, with no proof that you, the tenant, are at fault.
All of these requirements and responsibilities and liabilities are supposed to be written into a pamphlet full of anti-tenant bias that all tenants are supposed to get but -- in fact -- most tenants will never see!
Tenants are supposed to get a 48 hour notice of inspection for or extermination of bedbugs in their apartment. If they don't 'cooperate" the cost is shifted onto the tenant. That may sound reasonable on the surface, but HOW DO WE KNOW the tenant actually got the notice? Answer: we do NOT. It's all based on the landlord's word. We asked for the tenants to sign a receipt for the notice so that there would be proof, but the landlords said it was too much to bother with receipts.
The potential for retaliation by just not giving the notice to particular tenants and claiming they got it and did not cooperate is extreme.
This bill, as currently written is an assault on tenants. The only time a tenant should be held liable is when the tenant with full knowledge is purposely and unreasonably not cooperating.
All of the bias has to come out and there must be proof that tenants got the notices and the re-written pamphlet. Only in the most extreme circumstance should a tenant ever have to bear the burden of the extermination.
CALL YOUR ASSEMBLY MEMBERS TO VOTE NO ON A-1578 !!
There are 40 legislative districts and each has two Assembly members. If you know who your Assembly members are and their phone numbers, please call them Thursday and Friday (even leave messages over the weekend and at night).
To find your Assembly members information, go to http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/members/legsearch.asp
Scroll down the page and you can search by municipality, district, or alphabetically. Municipality is probably the best way, unless you know which district you are in.
If you want to read the bill itself, you can find it here:
If you have more time call the sponsor of the bill Assemblywoman L. Grace Spencer (D-29) at (973) 624-1730. Ask her to have the bill "held" (not voted on) and to work with the NJTO to make all the changes needed to make it reasonable and unbiased.
You can also call the Speaker of the Assembly, Assemblyman Vincent Prieto (D-32) at (201) 770-1303 and ask him to take it off the agenda for Monday.
Yours in the struggle for the civil rights of tenants,
Matt Shapiro
President
New Jersey Tenants Organization
P.S., If your NJTO membership is not up-to-date, or if you want to send an additional donation to keep NJTO alive, please go to our website: http://www.njto.org where you can use a credit/debit card to renew ("SUBSCRIBE" button) or donate ("DONATE" button). If you prefer to send a check, please hit the "JOIN NJTO" box near the top to get a form to fill out and mail in with a check. We would not be mentioning this if it were not absolutely necessary.
P.P.S. This bill is extremely important. We must fight it!
